As I’ve been watching the evolution of the cloud, it has become clearer and clearer that a huge transition is in process, the transition from isolated computers that send data to one another over networks to a highly integrated worldwide computing fabric that distributes computation, storage, and data movement seamlessly, dynamically, and automatically without (much) regard to geography. This endpoint is what I've called for some years the "world computer.”
I'm not the first or only person to think about this. I remember my Dad told a joke when I was a kid about the scientists putting together the first galactic computer. They ask it a question: "Is there a God?” The computer replies: "There is now.”
However you view it, it's hard to think intelligently about the world computer, as a technologist, as an investor, as a policy-maker, or as a citizen.
One big set of questions has to do with how -- and how fast -- the evolution will occur. Investors like me care about these questions a lot, because we need to make profitable bets on the right pathways to cloud computing at the right time. If you invested in magnetic bubble memory in 1980 (which was "sure" to be the persistent storage solution instead of those flakey, slow floppy disks) or if you invested in SNA in 1992 (because it was the only "real" networking standard, unlike that sloppy bastard child TCP/IP), you were out of luck. If you bet on Netscape in 1996 or MP3 players in 2004 you were equally out of luck, because it was the wrong time.
Most people would agree that we will reach the world computer stage somewhere in the not-too-distant future, but there are a lot of questions about 1) how long it will take, 2) by what routes it will develop, and 3) how to invest profitably in this truly big wind.
Here are some of my thoughts on these questions:
Things will happen quickly.
I think that the general course of “cloud-i-zation” is going to go faster than others seem to think. I see us being essentially at a world computer status in five to ten years.
Geography will matter.
There will be regional clouds based on minimum latencies and possibly some kinds of regional specialization. So, we might have an East Coast North American cloud with some specializations in financial and security ops. Maybe this cloud is based in Iceland and services London as well? There might be a "supply-chain" cloud based in Taiwan or China. There might be an "entertainment/media" cloud based in LA.
We are "crossing the chasm" into cloud-ville today.
Early adopters are trying to get ahead of the curve for advantage, but early majority customers do not see a credible "complete solution" yet. Geoffrey Moore, the author of Crossing the Chasm, teaches us that complete solutions arise in some niche or beachhead. The profitable investments today will be cloud-oriented solutions for that niche or niches.
Cloud appliances will emerge.
One possible kind of niche for a complete solution, I think, is what I call the "cloud appliance." Like the hardware appliance for which it is named, a cloud appliance is a cloud-based solution that performs one kind of optimized function well.
Ad exchanges will take the form of cloud appliances.
An ad exchange is a good example of a cloud appliance. The utility of having a cloud-based ad exchange is pretty clear, provided that the bidders are located "latency-close" to the exchange.
Email and email archiving seem like two other natural cloud appliances.
There is a widespread migration of email from premises-based to cloud-based today, I think; you see signs of it all around. Maybe too late for the email appliance slot (which may be occupied by Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT), among others), but perhaps the email archiving slot is still open. An email-archiving cloud appliance would manage both premises- and cloud-based email, would archive to cloud storage, and would manage e-discovery of the email archive from a Web front-end.
There are equally vexing questions about the world computer for policy-makers and citizens. Grist for another blog.
— Dan Gordon is director of research at Valhalla Partners. He has over 30 years experience working with technology, as a computer scientist, software developer, manager, analyst, and entrepreneur.
An ad exchange of the kind I'm talking about is completely automatic. Unlike AdWords et. al., where a human has to place the orders, an ad exchange automatically matches bids for ads with ad placement opportunities in real time, so that in the space of 50 msec, Advertiser X's bid for, say, 18-34 yo males considering car purchases will be matched with inventory from various publishers and the "auction" will close in time to serve the ad to the viewer who is currently waiting for a page. These exist today, but don't (yet) account for the majority of ads served online.
This kind of exchange involves pretty high security. Like a stock exchange, only authorized advertisers or publishers are allowed "in". Just because this facility is called a "cloud" facility doesn't mean it's open to the public, any more than AdWords is open to any fake bidder.
Great post!! Frankly speaking there were a lot of things in this post of yours that I was earlier completely unaware of .I would like to thank you for that!!
Just had a couple of queries regarding the following point you made regarding Ad exchanges.
"
Ad exchanges will take the form of cloud appliances. An ad exchange is a good example of a cloud appliance. The utility of having a cloud-based ad exchange is pretty clear, provided that the bidders are located "latency-close" to the exchange."
Question1 )How would this Ad-exchange be different from Google's Adwords or other competitive platforms from Microsoft/Apple/Yahoo?
Question 2)Will companies be able to assure significant degree of Security regarding Ad placements(only genuine ads are paid for) and how lucrative a target will this be for malware writers who can upload their code into the cloud and thereby gain access to infect dozens of Computers??
With the introduction of the Chrome notebook, Google is creating a not-so-thin client for its cloud servers... But it's not quite a "world computer" yet b/c Verizon is the carrier Google is starting with -- and the world isn't all CDMA.
I think eventually it will evolve, as AI grows and computers begin to start to do basic thinking themselves to give pre-answers to response to stimuli from human counterparts that are expecting the data at a whim when prompted. To do that you'd need a linked AI super computer and the cloud is probably the birth of that, modernly I HOPE they don't call it SkyNet, I just couldn't handle the pun. But besides that movie, it was actually done in Colossus as well.
Here's the IMBD and where I think things like this will first happen while working in defense industry.
Colossus: The Forbin Project.
Forbin is the designer of an incredibly sophisticated computer that will run all of America's nuclear defenses. Shortly after being turned on, it detects the existence of Guardian, the Soviet counterpart, previously unknown to US Planners. Both computers insist that they be linked, and after taking safeguards to preserve confidential material, each side agrees to allow it. As soon as the link is established the two become a new Super computer and threaten the world with the immediate launch of nuclear weapons if they are detached. Colossus begins to give it's plans for the management of the world under it's guidance. Forbin and the other scientists form a technological resistance to Colossus which must operate underground.
Dan, I hope all the good things you mention in your article would soon come true. I also hope that the local devices will need to become faster, but have less storage space if any, and the prices for them drop.
Maybe with the 'World Computer' we'll finally learn "the ultimate answer to life, universe and everything" =)
It seems that along the way there will be a need for a "neural net" to help with the cloud, and that is where the current group of IT will come into play to service that and help develop it
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